#who cares about low quality work when you dont have to pay creators right

[nintendont2502]

yk its just. so goddamn fun watching the rise of llms as an artist, writer *and* programmer. oh haha yeah the computers are gonna take over literally any potentially tolerable career i could have? cool. great. i cant wait

[wurmeatworld]

As an artist, I think ai art is a very complex issue. Yes it can be used as a tool to advance creativity, but capitalism ultimately twists it so that it is not used ethically.

I like some ai generated memes. Its really funny to watch Joe Biden banter with Leon S Kennedy, or watch deepfakes of Preminger singing Lady Gaga. But I feel like the same humor could be achieved without the use of ai. You could splice together lines ala ytp or animate Preminger singing. It just requires more time and skill, and thats really the draw of ai. Ai helps a greater pool of people do things they normally couldnt do because it cuts out the work.

The capability to expand what people can do and create is good! I once followed a disabled person on tumblr who made ai art for personal use because his disability meant he couldn't draw. Ive also used ai art generators in the past, back when the results were super uncanny and whacky, to generate funny images or interesting eldritch horror-y art. If ai art wasn't built upon so much stolen art, that'd be a completely beautiful thing. Id love to donate my art to an ai program that only trains on explicitly donated work. I think thatd be really cool. But most people Ive seen making ai art and ai art generators are tech bros who only care about end results and money instead of appreciating the intent, technique, and artistry that artists pour into their work. And of course, not giving two shits about us getting paid.

Ive seen people make ai to intentionally copy the works of particular artists. It's almost indistinguishable from their art style, and to me, that feels insulting. These artists put so much work into their art, only for someone to churn out much more art in their style, and faster. Copying art you like has always been a thing among artists, to pay homage to creators and to learn new things by studying, but these ai art pieces that explicity train on an artists work and replicate their style feel... really hollow. Wheras among most artists, their replication comes from a place of respect and admiration, and requires truly learning and following the techniques an artist used, ai art just pulls from already existing assets with no real direction to guide it except a simple prompt. Theres no respect for the artist here, just someone who wants more of an artists work but doesnt actually care about the artist themself.

The amount of labor you need to create ai art vs regular art, and how ai art steals work from artists, is a discussion all on its own. This doesnt really have an easy black and white solution because of capitalism. In a world where we wouldnt need money to survive, it wouldnt really matter that ai art takes less effort to make because it wouldnt infringe on artists livlihoods. But as it is, and especially in our "quantity and familiarity over quality" consumerist culture, the attention it takes from artists can cause loss of revenue, and people offering ai art commissions only hurt artists more. The most popular areas of the internet already arent great platforms for artists, even though were forced to use them. Our culture doesnt really value our work, and most artists offer their work for ridiculously low prices just to sell anything at all. My pixel art commissions are $9. $9 for hours of sitting at my computer, working and shaping and reworking the pixels until theyre just right. Color, position, everything has a lot of time, care, and skill put into it. I wish I could charge double what I pay, but I have an extremely small platform, so Im forced to charge barely anything at all. If we did not need money to survive, it wouldnt be that big of a deal. But we do. So it is.

And as things stand, even disregarding the problem of capitalism, theres just too many harmful ways ai can be exploited because theres barely any regulation. The deepfaked nudes, the easy misinformation, etc. I personally dont think regulation will be enough bc the base problem is caused by capitalism, and tbh I think media literacy plays a huge part, but there still needs to be. Its just an incredibly dangerous technology as it stands right now.

Also worth noting, is how algorithms can easily lead to radicalization. A study came out showing that new tiktok users who watch certain "gateway" content will gradually be shown more and more extremist stuff. (Source: x *) Especially on social media sites, which are designed to promote controversial posts because theres more engagement, this can lead to someone potentially becoming part of a hate group. I bet theres ways algorithms could be written to prevent this, but everyone wants money, so its probably not gonna change anytime soon. Consumerism is a bitch.

Also, algorithms promote the most commonly accepted ideas, which causes bias and can cause social and scientific progress to become stagnant at best, and actively harmful at worst.

Basically, ai needs to be better regulated, capitalism sucks, and ai art is a whole can of worms. I feel like humanity needs to keep ai art on the highest shelf until we can work out the ethical dilemmas we already have.

(This was originally a comment I left on this video, but I put a lot of thought into it so I thought I'd repost it here. Please watch the video, it brings up more ideas on ai and is just a fun watch)

*Its a youtube video and the info is compressed and presented quickly, but sources are all linked.

[oldmyths]

i said i’d post videos but i just did one because the arguments against cinemasins here would just be repeated over and over again across the videos i’d link

so here’s bobvids “Sustaining Stupidiity - Why CinemaSins is Terrible” (35:42)

and if u don’t have half an hour to spare i’ve written down the points he makes but whenever u have time u should really watch it cos i leave some stuff out. i’m not transcribing the video but providing bulletpoints so u dont have to watch a 35min video if u dont have to

cinemasins is bad

for film criticism

people who haven’t seen the movie the Everything Wrong With video can be legitimately mislead abt the movies quality

a lot of people, including cinemasins, consider EWW to be review, at least in part, which is misrepresentation

this contributes to teaching youtube to think that criticism should be judged by its entertainment value instead of the merit of its arguments

for youtube

despite its falsehoods, youtube encourages you to watch an EWW video by placing it near the top of the search results when u look up a movie

enforces the idea that facts are overrated and can be easily excused by means of "satire" and "comedy" which undermines actual comedy creators on youtube

for critical thinking and intellectual honesty

people won’t question cinemasins if it has a sliver of entertainment value and will defend them despite their various contradictions

cinemasins is not satire

jeremy claims "we're playing a character. a know-it-all movie-obsessed nitpicking asshole"

"satire jokes"/"criticisms" he makes in EWW videos can be found in his before&after movie review videos on his personal channel, cinemasins jeremy

"i've always been a hyper-observant nitpicking jerk... [eww videos are] just a manifestation of that" - jeremy

cinemasins apologizes for making mistakes in their videos

if EWW was satire why would they apologize for some jokes but not others? if the EWW character they play is an asshole, they wouldn’t care about being wrong, because they’d drive the point home that they’re playing a character

jeremy himself states that the purpose for creating the cinemasins channel was to criticize hollywood for using tropes and cliches, this is not satire

cinemasins is. just bad

when your audience has to figure out whether or not you're kidding, you've messed up the joke

combining accurate nitpicks with inaccurate ones with no clear differential between the two are when the "criticisms" get confusing

cinemasins may say theyre not critics but what theyre doing in their videos are criticisms

jeremy even says theyre "parody, criticism, and review rolled into one" in an AMA, they only drop the criticism and review descriptors when its convenient for them

cinemasins is misleading

their videos get at least over a million views. people take these "sins" as genuine criticisms and deem the movie bad because somebody on the internet said so

actual News Websites link to cinemasins videos under the guise that these videos are criticism

these websites misrepresent cinemasins as wholly criticisms of a movie.

cinemasins purposefully broadcast misunderstandings as poorly executed "jokes"

some will say this is cinemasins playing the asshole character for a joke but after a certain point it doesn’t matter. if you pretend to be stupid for long enough, you just look stupid. perpetuating your stupidity to people who are rightfully confused about what you’re trying to say

cinemasins is clickbait

the dudes behind cinemasins worked at a place that describes itself as “[offering] youtube tips and tricks for video marketing... if you're selling or promoting products and services, we'll teach you how to use online video to dominate your field and setup your sales conversions to be as effective as possible.”

they included “[x] minutes or less” in their video titles because people like to see numbers, they know how much time will be spent watching that content, and they’re interested to see what can "fit into" that time

"trend surfing" by paying attention to what pop culture is invested in right now and making an EWW related to hot new films

if the only reason you’re making videos to capitalize on a trend, its unlikely that you have anything worthwhile to say

cinemasins aren’t making their content longer because movies suddenly suck more these days, its because theyre video marketers and they make more money by forcing their content to be longer

longer videos means you appear higher in search results, which means more people see and click your content, which means u make more money.

theres nothing inately bad about using reasonable marketing tactics to promote content that has value. when the sole purpose of your channel is to manufacture long, low effort, trend surfing clickbait to generate revenue, you forfeit any meaning that content could’ve had